


Reveille

by Ark



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: A Journey, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Catharsis, Drugs, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Sex, a fix-it of sorts, reflections, resolutions, spoilers for Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:35:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14586063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: “Are you a spirit?”“Dear Thor,” says Loki, looking delighted, and framing Thor’s face between his hands. “However do you make being dense so charming.” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, brother. This is all in your mind.”





	Reveille

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 日本語 available: [Reveille](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14704713) by [Sarah_translator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_translator/pseuds/Sarah_translator)



> Origin and Etymology of _reveille_ from Merriam-Webster:
> 
> modification of French _réveillez_ , imperative plural of _réveiller_ to awaken, from Middle French _reveiller_ , from _re-_ \+ _eveiller_ to awaken, from Vulgar Latin _*exvigilare_ , from Latin _ex-_ \+ _vigilare_ to keep watch, stay awake

“Come back,” says Thor.

He says it all the time: in the pale mornings, the long afternoons, the impossible nights. 

He says it in his dreams. In the good dreams Loki lies smiling in his arms, his face young and uncreased by strife. “Come back,” Thor will say, and he feels Loki’s laughter against his lips. 

In the bad dreams Loki lies in his arms unmoving, his eyes unseeing. “Come back,” Thor tells him, and he tastes the tracks of tears down Loki’s cheek.

For a long while Thor asked in other ways. Waking in his room in the lonely, half-empty Avengers’ compound, he would sit up and try to bargain. 

“Brother, hear me,” most days began, “this trickery is growing old. But I forgive you. I forgive you, Loki. There’s no need to stay away.”

In the afternoon, staring down a plate of food that seemed to lack all color: “Forgive me,” Thor would say. “Forgive that I doubted you. I have not earned that forgiveness yet, but I will. I will, if I can but show you.”

And at night: “I will turn down the covers for you, as I have ever done,” was the bedtime litany. “Slip under them like you used to, Loki, it’s all right.”

As the gray days passed unanswered the words started to stick in Thor’s throat. He found them harder to speak. 

So now he only says, “Come back,” and sometimes he isn’t sure if he gives voice to it or if its resounding echo is only in his head.

Thor does not rest easily any longer—none of them do—but his endurance means that sleep may be bent to his will. Whole days go past, or a blurred week, or two, and he has not shut his eyes. Sometimes it makes the world seem less cutting and cold to be so far past exhaustion that he feels quite disembodied.

Other weeks, he sleeps for grateful hours without end, the built-up deprivation letting him sink into blissful and uninterrupted rest. The longer he stays awake, the longer he will sleep thereafter; it is a simple formula to experiment with and master.

The line between sleeping and wakefulness is a fine one to pull taut, for it is in his dreams that he may see Loki again; and if he learns to manipulate this hazy space he can ensure that every dream is good and not one is wasted.

For a while, it works: dreams are part of Thor’s birthright, their power and prophecy beneath his skin just like lightning, and with practice he achieves a measure of seeming success. 

In dreams, Loki, a lithe, sly-tongued youth, manifests in Thor’s bed, wide-eyed and wildly affectionate when Thor makes love to him—as Loki ever was then. Or Loki will appear older and with painful shadows carved under his eyes, wiser and and sharper and far more brittle, so that Thor must be gentle with him—as Thor never was then. 

Thor worships at the altar of Loki’s thighs, the proud line of his neck, he tells the ivory bend of Loki’s ear how he loves him and to come back. Since Loki does not come back Thor tries to stay in the dreams as long as he can.

One day Thor finds himself in an unfamiliar bed, his throat parched and his body aching as though from a fight that he lost without remembering. 

Red rage sets in at having been awakened, for in his dream just then Loki was above him, astride him, bending so that Thor could grasp the dark silk curtain of his hair. Now Thor is in a blank white room with Banner hovering over him instead of his brother, emptying the contents of a needle into Thor’s arm.

If it were anyone but Banner, Thor would have sent him flying into the wall. Instead, he snaps, “What is the meaning of this?”

“Hey, buddy,” says Bruce, backing up with his needle to a safer distance. “Nice to see you again.”

“I demand to know why you woke me,” Thor says. Some awful chemical is coursing through his veins, forcing his eyes open, making his heart race; there will be no sleep for him now, for all that he longs for that oblivion. For Loki above him, leaning close, Thor’s hand caught in his black hair.

Bruce puts the needle into a case that seems designed to hold it and brings over a cup of water. Once, not so long ago, Thor’s instinct would have told him to knock it away it petulant fury, but now he takes the water and drinks to hasten an explanation. 

“You, uh,” Bruce starts. He pushes his glasses up his nose where they have slipped down. “Thor, we _couldn’t_ wake you up. Not for anything. Not for _days._ I even asked Cap to slap you around a little, but nada. If you’re wondering why you might feel kind of slapped around, though, sorry, that was us.”

Thor blinks at this. “How long was I asleep?”

“Ninety-six hours, give or take.” Bruce folds his arms across his chest. His face is carefully blank. Scrupulously lacking judgement, and Thor must glance away from him. “Waking you was a team effort. Nat and Rhodey flew to Wakanda to ask Okoye for a vibranium needle so that we could dose you—your skin is something else, the amount of syringes we broke at first—and Rocket worked with me in the lab to create something that would pull you out of it. That furball knows even more about drugs than me or Tony’s personal archives, which is saying something.”

“Bet your ass I do,” says Rocket, hopping up onto the end of Thor’s cot. He must have been waiting by the bed out of sight. He pokes at Thor’s exposed foot. “This furball just saved your life, pal. In return I think we should talk partial shares of Stormbreaker. Maybe a time-sharing deal where you get her in the spring and summer, and I—”

Thor smiles in spite of the circumstances. “My thanks for your assistance, Rabbit.”

“Yeah.” Rocket’s bravado fades, and he looks far more serious than any raccoon should be able to look. “Don’t mention it.”

“And I,” says Steve from behind them, “I stayed here and did a pretty good job of playing nursemaid, I gotta say. Since I didn’t lose any patients.”

Thor turns his head and sees the Captain sitting in a chair by the back corner of the room. He looks like he’s been sitting for a long time.

“You did,” says Bruce warmly to Steve. Then, as though for Thor’s benefit, and to fill the sudden silence: “He did.”

“Had a lot of secondhand experience,” says Steve. “Used to have a lot of nurses.” He clears his throat. “If you two could give me a moment with Thor?”

“Sure,” says Rocket, seeming relieved as he leaps back down. “Hey, doc, what say we go cook up some more interesting intoxicants in that lab of yours? We could make a little side business, you and me.”

Bruce rolls his eyes in playful exasperation and squeezes Thor’s shoulder in passing as he follows Rocket out of the room. Steve gets up and moves over to the foot of the bed, where he stands at uneasy attention.

“All of this was unnecessary, Captain,” Thor says, cutting him off before the admonitions can start. “I appreciate the concern, but my life was not in danger.”

“Maybe.” Steve considers him with a haggard expression on a face that looks as at war with sleep as Thor’s own. “Seemed to us it was at least in limbo for a while there. And that’s not gonna cut it.”

The old haughty pride still lives buried in Thor’s chest, and for a moment it flares. He is a King— _a King of nothing_ , a whisper tries to correct, _a King of flame and ash_ —and he will not be spoken down to. “My affairs are my own,” he says at last.

“That’s the thing,” says Steve. “Not anymore they aren’t. You’re with us, and we—we need you, Thor.”

Thor meets his gaze unblinking. The Captain is one of two men who has not flinched under the full force of his glare; Loki is the other. Thor feels his jaw clench. Nods.

“You’re the best chance we have at fighting Thanos, and—to—to turn this thing around,” says Steve, though all their long months of searching for a solution have borne no fruit. There’s an ache in Steve’s tone when he speaks of reversing their reality that Thor knows all too well. “What if we’d had an attack while you were out like that? Can’t happen again.”

Because he cannot promise this thing that Steve wants him to promise, he cannot—Thor simply nods again.

Steve studies him with his eyes for strategy. Then he says, “Listen. I get it. I do.”

There’s a corresponding sympathy—a reflection of vast and incomprehensible loss—in Steve’s every action, and Thor can appreciate it; but though Steve Rogers is a good man, and has already experienced more than most mortals ever will, he cannot possibly grasp the enormity of Thor’s grief. 

Steve lost his era but not his entire world. He lost a man dear to him for decades but not one beloved for a millenia, rooted in blood and bone and reborn to Thor in the fires of their home.

“You cannot,” says Thor softly, tries not to make it sound unkind. 

Steve lifts an eyebrow. “You wanna compare notes? Person you love most in the world goes away, comes back a monster, but you know that’s not what they really are, and then when you think you might get a second chance against all the odds—”

“You still do not understand,” interrupts Thor, closing his eyes, which hurt, and only opening them again with effort. “We will restore your partner and the others when we reverse the Gauntlet’s damage, or die in the process so that it ceases to matter. But I will never see Loki again. He’s—” It hurts so much to say that the words bite like barbs into his tongue. “He is not coming back.”

The hollow shadows under Steve’s eyes remind him too much of how Loki had looked on Midgard, lost to himself and to Thor. Steve shifts his weight from foot to foot—a boxer’s way of passing time, of looking for an opening. “Don’t your people believe, that—that after death you’re reunited with your loved ones?” 

All of a sudden Steve appears not so much a battle-hardened Captain but the hopeful young man he was before his transformation. He is so young, thinks Thor, who has never felt the weight of his years more. 

“Loki was of the opinion that he would not go to Valhalla,” says Thor. Then, incredibly, he feels on the verge of smiling, though that is the last thing he should do; still, he cannot stop himself. He smiles. “If he was given a choice of where to spend his afterlife, I think he would shun the golden hall, if only to prove himself correct.”

“You see him in your dreams,” says Steve, meeting Thor’s gaze again, his tone frank and no-nonsense. “That’s what all this was about.” Before Thor can confirm or deny the charge, Steve goes on. “The others—we can tell them whatever you want. Maybe Asgardians hibernate, I don’t know.” 

What Thor wouldn’t give for his father’s ability to Odinsleep and shut everything else out—

“It’s only me and Dr. Banner and Rocket who’ve sat with you,” Steve continues. “Sometimes you, ah—spoke in your sleep.”

Thor nods. “I’m not ashamed of what I did, only for any distress that it caused. You may tell the others anything you like, but the truth is not something I aim to conceal.”

“I see,” says Steve. He swallows, and seems determined to keep his features carefully composed. “So you and Loki, uh, you two really—”

Thor spares him. Mortals, and American ones at that, are curiously ashamed and reticent about the nature and expression of love. “Yes,” says Thor simply. “For many centuries more than your country has existed, Captain.” 

“That’s—” there’s a battle for Steve’s expression that compassion ultimately wins, with sadness fast behind. Steve looks away, looks down at his calloused hands. “That’s an awful long time to love someone.”

“It was often a trial,” Thor agrees, “and also the source of my greatest happiness. Love is all the sweeter when you have passed through it seeming sour, do you not find?”

“That could be the case,” Steve says after a pause. He is quiet a while longer, and then he says, as though trying to give a confidence in return for Thor’s, “I dream about Bucky sometimes. Not as often as I’d like.”

“And if you had the ability to ensure that you saw him every night, and could embrace him,” says Thor with as much gentleness as he can manage, since Steve is closer now to understanding. “Whenever you closed your eyes. What would you do?”

Steve’s practical instinct grapples with the truth, it’s clear as day on his face. It occurs to Thor how tired Steve looks then—how young, and how tired. Steve says, “I’d go under for another seventy years. Happily.”

“Just so,” says Thor. 

“But it can’t happen again.” The practical Captain remerges, his shoulders squaring. “Are we on the same page about that?”

“I will do my best to ensure the team is not endangered by my absence,” Thor says. “You have my word.” 

It’s all that he can promise at the moment, and he does not know if he can stay bound to it. He cannot promise anything where Loki is concerned, for Loki swallowed up all of Thor’s promises long ago. 

They stare each other down: two grief-battered men, commanders of soldiers, most comfortable in a skirmish yet unwilling to deny the softer parts of their hearts—their hearts that may be the best of who they are, for wars are meant to end and life and love to grow from killing fields. They recognize too much in staring, and neither will be the first to drop their eyes.

Steve nods at length. “All right,” he says. 

Thor nods also. “I am glad to have spoken with you, Capt—Steve.” Then he hesitates. He should not ask, but now that Steve is no innocent about what Loki was to him: ”I admit to some curiosity. What did I say in my sleep?”

“Some of it, ah, doesn’t bear repeating,” Steve says, flushed anew, and Thor can only imagine the exclamations of pleasure that passed his lips as he took Loki again and again in dreamspace. “Some garbled words I couldn’t quite make out. A lot of ‘Loki’s. But mostly, it was—” Now he does drop his eyes, as though he cannot speak the words while not looking at a particular face. “—It was ‘I love you.’ And ‘come back.’”

“I thank you for your honesty,” Thor says around the carved-out place in his chest. “And for much more besides. If you do not mind, I would like some time alone now.”

“Yeah, of course,” says Steve, and he seems as relieved as Rocket had to have his duty done and the chance to leave the room. 

He comes around to the side of the bed and extends his hand, and Thor puts up his own and grasps Steve’s wrist, and they grip like that a while, testing each other’s strength and finding comfort in mutual fortitude. There is no need for further discussion between them.

When Steve goes out, he shuts the door firmly behind him, and Thor leans back into his pillow, gladder than he can say for the silence. He aches in ways that are physical but mostly not, and because of his long rest—and his dosing—sleep will elude him for many hours. He has promised not to employ the same behaviors that he has as of late, but none of his friends can keep him from craving the respite and the relief of seeing Loki when he finally closes his eyes on this day.

The door opens, breaking the soothing silence and tipping Thor toward anger—he has done quite enough talking—but when he turns his head to see what Steve has returned to say, there is no one there. Then he drops his gaze and sees Rocket leaning against the wall. 

“I did ask not to be disturbed,” Thor says, though of them all he finds this creature’s company oddly reassuring. He likes the raccoon’s brash, unapologetic opportunism, his relentless cleverness. Few enough say what they mean, nor demand anything but the same brutal assessment in return.

“Keep your pants on, this’ll only take a minute.” Rocket jumps up to the place on the bed he’d occupied by Thor’s feet. “I come bearing gifts.”

His paws are empty, and Thor raises an eyebrow.

“I’m trying to decide if I should give it to you or not,” Rocket says. “The rest of your team, I’ve never met such a bunch of worrywarts in my life. Caterwauling about you like you wouldn’t recover from taking that nap. If they knew why I was here there’d be a lot more yelling. But I’ve seen what you can do, kid. I’ve seen what you can take.”

Thor is half-amused, trying to remember the last time when anyone referred to him as a child. “My life was not in danger,” he agrees. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Rocket says, skirting over this with a nod. “But what about your mind? That’s the tricky one. You’ve gotta get your head into a better place.”

Thor tries to read those furry features to see what he’s about. “And you suggest...?” 

“Drugs,” says Rocket without hesitation. He opens a pouch on his belt and removes a small dark sphere. When he holds it up to the light, colors seem to refract and swim around in its liquid depths. “There’s a certain planet I know—not gonna tell you where. Real spiritual place. People go there when they’re feeling lost, see, when they’re looking for answers. The keepers, they make a drug from their native flower—this pretty baby right here. Can’t get it anywhere else.”

Thor doesn’t pretend that he’s not intrigued by the unexpected tale. “What does it do?”

“Takes you where you need to go,” Rocket says. “Like I said, real oogly boogly out there stuff. But I figured, hey, maybe that’s just what the doctor ordered in your case. The doctor meaning me, not your four-eyed friend with the anger management issues. I figured, better that you trip balls one time than put yourself into a coma again.” He shrugs, like neither condition is much to him. “Thing is, you’re only supposed to take this once. So I’m not gonna tell you where to get more of it. Don’t need you bifrosting your ass across the universe to keep tripping the light fantastic just because you have a weird relationship with your brother. Not that I judge. I don’t judge.” 

Thor follows the peaks and valleys of this speech to some extent. Thinks that he can parse its general purpose. “You mean to offer me this intoxicant as a distraction from my grief,” he tries. 

Rocket blows out an exasperated breath. “No, no, you’re not listening. It’s not supposed to distract. It’s not a fun drug like that. The way people talk about it—and they never stop talking about it—it’s a journey,” he says, tapping his foot impatiently. “A big one. You know, like a kinda quest. You like those, right? And in the end you’re supposed to come back with resolution to the problem that made you want to to trip balls to solve it in the first place.”

“That seems unlikely,” Thor says, though he tries to show that he is grateful for the raccoon’s kindly gesture. It’s touching, truly, but he cannot see how it will help, because—

”Loki is dead,” Thor says, making himself speak the terrible words so that he will hear them. 

“So I’ve heard, a time or seventy,” Rocket says. Appearing to arrive at a decision, he scurries forward and presses the sphere into Thor’s hand. It is terrifically cold to the touch. “But he isn’t, is he. Not up here.” His small fingers rap against Thor’s temple with surprising strength. “So swallow that if you want to, see if it takes you where you need to go.”

He hops down from the bed before Thor can return the drug. Thor stares at it, the colors drifting within the dark like a self-contained galaxy. Despite his skepticism, his curiosity is piqued. “Where did you go when you took it?”

“I haven’t,” says Rocket, and he licks the back of one paw nonchalantly and runs it behind his ear. “I’ve been saving it for a rainy day.”

“Then I could not—”

“Oh, calm down, for the love of some god who’s probably your second cousin,” says Rocket. “I can get more if I have to. I’m resourceful like that. Thing is, I don’t got problems like you got problems. Think about it, is all I’m saying.” The door slams and Thor is alone again in the blank white room.

Thor examines the tiny galaxy in his hand. In all his long lifetime he has never shied away from a challenge, from an unknown experience. He has fought death herself, his sister, and come back. 

_Come back_.

It will be many hours yet until he can sleep again, until he has a chance to close his eyes. So—

—it slips cold and heavy down his throat like a marble, and—

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens. He should have known, his constitution is very—

—very—

He is a boy in a green Asgardian grove. Overhead the sun is high. The weather is perfect, and birds call their songs through the branches. Thor remembers this day. It is the best day of his life. 

He has chased Loki through the wood, both of them laughing, Loki using some tricks and nascent magic to prolong the pursuit. But Thor wins in the end, trapping his brother against a tall tree and stealing from Loki their first kiss, which he has so often heard about in stories. It is even better than a story.

Loki laughs against his lips and then goes still. His closed eyes fly open. “Thor, we should not,” he says, as though recalling a lesson.

“Why?” Thor asks. Loki always knows the answers that he lacks, but not today. 

“I forget why,” Loki says.

“I love you best of all,” Thor tells him. “In the tales that’s when you’re supposed to kiss someone.”

“Then I am glad, brother,” says Loki, and Thor sees what he had not seen then: the total adoration and trust in Loki’s eyes, and something like profound relief. “For I also love you best. Perhaps you should try again.” 

They are older, by years, by decades. Thor is in the palace at Asgard in its blazing prime. He can smell the smoke from torches, hear the bards’ music in his ears. If he goes in another direction he will see his parents in the great hall, see them proud and glittering and alive. But he left the hall that night. It is the best day of his life.

Thor has followed Loki from a raucous feast, unable to rest his eyes on anything but his brother in a new green tunic that flatters his every inch. He is quite certain that Loki wore the tunic on purpose just to torment him. 

Emboldened by youth and wine, he catches Loki in the hallway and risks kissing him with only the shadows for cover. Loki laughs against his lips and chides him and draws Thor into his chambers with their hands laced tightly together.

They both know what this night will be, but as Thor kisses all the inches of Loki’s skin that were covered by the tunic, Loki goes still. 

“Thor, we cannot,” he says, his eager fingers in Thor’s hair belying the words.

“Why?” Thor asks. He kisses Loki’s neck like it is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. It is.

“I have already forgotten,” Loki says.

And when Thor is inside of him at last—when they are inside each other—he gazes down at Loki’s wide eyes, his parted mouth, and he sees what he had not seen then: all-consuming obsession, jealousy and yearning, infatuation and anguish. It is all there, bright in Loki’s eyes as sunlight, yet he missed it, caught up in blinding arrogance and delicious conquest. 

That night, Loki says it first, as Thor moves in him: “I will—I will always love you best.”

“Why?” Thor asks against Loki’s throat. He asked it then, teasing, but he is curious this time.

“A profound lack of judgement where you are concerned, I suppose,” Loki tells him around gasps. “Poor decision making on my part. Certain innate self-destructive tendencies.” 

Loki had tried to tell him, to warn what he was capable of becoming, but Thor only grinned and kissed him and sped his thrusts until they came together. Loki had tried but he had not heard.

The years have withered and weathered them. The wind howls atop an impossibly tall tower in an alien city. The sun is trapped behind clouds. It is the worst day of Thor’s life. 

If Loki’s eyes seemed like a stranger’s Thor might be strong enough to survive this. But they are not. They are Loki’s, green and lovely and full of hatred and despair. 

He only glimpsed the hatred the first time in New York, but he sees now what he had not seen then: he did not know what abject despair in Loki’s eyes looked like until recently. 

_I love you best,_ Thor thinks, and Loki drives a knife into his gut.

Loki is imprisoned in an ensorcelled cage. He bleeds from one foot and pain bleeds from his eyes. He has not seen the sun in so long that his milky skin is translucent. Their mother is dead. It is the worst day of Thor’s life.

He frees Loki, and Loki comes back to him. In a moment of furious abandon he takes Loki pinned to the wall in the hushed darkness of a passage to the dungeons. It is rough and frantic and exhilarating, it is everything that Thor has denied himself. He punishes and rewards them both.

Loki laughs against his lips, sounding an inch from madness. But there are tears streaming down Loki’s cheeks, mixed grief and relief, and Thor bends his head to taste them. 

“I still love you best, damn you,” Thor says into Loki’s ear, driving him against the Asgardian stone. “ _Damn_ you. Why wasn’t that enough?”

“I forget why,” Loki tells him, and Thor sees what he had not seen then: Loki is telling the truth.

Years spill past. Loki reaches up and snatches a bottle-stopper from the air. Asgard lies in ruins but some hope yet remains. Loki is restored to his side. He’s here, he’s here. It is the best day of Thor’s life. 

When Thor crosses the cabin to hold Loki in his arms, Loki is laughing against his lips before they hit the bed. For the first time the usual script has some changes scribbled into its margins.

“Anyone might think you were in love with me,” says Loki languidly as Thor unsnaps the hooks on his leathers.

“I am,” says Thor.

“Why?”

“I will never forget why,” says Thor.

And when Loki is inside of him—when Thor lets him in and intends to keep him thereafter—Thor looks up and sees what he had not seen then: the conflict is gone from Loki’s eyes, the anger, the cruelty, the anguish, and all of the uncertainty. There is only a clear brilliant green the color of a tunic made for a midsummer feast. 

Then Loki’s mouth is moving along Thor’s neck, and he feels the shape of Loki’s lips change, realizes now, as he had not then, that Loki is whispering against his skin—

Thor hears himself reciting Loki’s words aloud in dazed wonder. How had he not heard what he’d so long wished to hear again: _”Thor, you should know that in the end—”_

“Yes,” says Loki. “I told you that I loved you best.” 

Loki faces Thor on a flat empty plane that seems to stretch out into infinity from every direction. There is nothing around them but each other, and a large sun blazing without heat overhead. Loki wears a crisp black suit. He sniffs. “Maudlin, weren’t we?”

“Loki?” Thor has been pressed through fifteen hundred years as though forced through a sieve. He gapes at his brother. “I did not think the raccoon’s drug would work on me. I cannot believe my eyes.”

Loki is comprised of light and shadows but he looks solid. When Thor reaches for him, Loki’s cheek is soft beneath his hand. Then Thor is closing the space between and wrapping his arms around Loki and kissing him and kissing him and tasting his laughing mouth—

“Choose wisely,” says Loki, pulling back only a little. “You have one go at a truly exceptional drug-induced hallucination. If you want to fuck we can fuck, but if you have anything to say to me best get that out of the way first. The clock is ticking.”

Thor nearly lets him go but he cannot make himself release the weight of Loki from his grasp. “Are you a spirit?”

“Dear Thor,” says Loki, looking delighted, and framing Thor’s face between his hands. “However do you make being dense so charming.” He shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, brother. This is all in your mind.”

“Then how—” Thor swallows, and his throat feels thick. All of it feels so real—so real, and also distant, as though they are shrouded in mist he cannot see. Still, Loki feels solid against him. Even in dreams Loki does not feel like this. Thor has missed the brightness of Loki’s eyes most of all. “I lived our whole lives through again. How did I see so much that I missed before?”

“You saw it in the past, but did not understand then what you were not looking for,” Loki says. It sounds weighty, so he punctuates it with a shrug. “And you’re not so much of an idiot these days. Don’t get me wrong. Still an idiot. But somewhat reduced.”

“I love you,” says Thor, helpless to say anything else.

“Yes, of that I am aware,” Loki says. “It isn't exactly a well-kept secret, is it?” He pauses, considers, as though he does not wish his voice to sound quite so biting. “I never doubted your sincerity in loving me, Thor. You should know that.”

“How can you know what I do not?” Thor demands. “If this is all inside my head?”

Loki rolls his eyes, exasperated. It’s a deeply remembered and deeply beloved expression. “I am everything that you know of me,” he explains. “And no one knew me better than you did. I can’t help it if the way you recollect me is smarter than you. You were always honest to a fault.”

Thor smiles at that, and for a golden moment he holds Loki against him, feels the warmth of how his brother can fit just so.

Then Loki draws away—nearly to arm’s length. “Well, let’s have it out, shall we?”

“What do you mean?” asks Thor.

“You love me above all things, and that’s a sentiment anyone might appreciate, even me,” says Loki. “But let’s talk about what you’ve been trying to avoid, escaping into thoughts of better days. You also hate me.”

“No,” says Thor.

“You cannot hurt my feelings, Thor,” Loki says. “I’m a figment of your imagination, and you’re a terrible liar.” Loki flicks at an invisible speck on his pristine cuff. “Asgard fell because of me.”

“No,” Thor says. “Hela—”

“Broke free because of what I did to our father,” Loki finishes smoothly.

“We could not have stopped Ragnarok,” says Thor. “It was foretold.”

“Hmm,” says Loki. “If that keeps you warm at night. Onward, then, to the crux of it. Thanos destroyed what was left of our people because I was selfish and greedy. You thought me finally changed for the better, but it was simply another trick.”

“No,” says Thor.

Loki blinks at him. “You’re the one who must have thought it of me, brother.”

“I cannot stop myself from unkind thoughts sometimes,” says Thor. “And I have had a long while to think and rage and mourn and do little else. But I have discovered that it is not true. Half of Asgard would have been lost regardless, had Thanos plucked the stone from the ruins of our home instead of from you. His plan would have proceeded.” He cannot stand the distance between them, and he reaches, tugs Loki back to him. “I care not what came before. Your last acts were not falsehoods. You died as the brother that I loved, and the person that I love beyond all reason.”

“You really shouldn’t use the present tense, you know,” says Loki, almost gently. But he responds to Thor’s reasoning with a soft, fond look such as Thor might hope to see upon his brow.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” says Thor.

“It’s easier for you to face agonies and betrayals and mass slaughter than a simple truth.”

“You’ve defied death before,” says Thor. “Wouldn’t it be very like me to be tricked again?”

“Thor,” says Loki. “I’m not coming back this time.”

“Please,” says Thor. “Please don’t say—“

“You know it to be so,” says Loki, and he seems to take pity on Thor then, running his hand through Thor’s hair until it rests on the the back of Thor’s neck. Thor can feel the caress down to the marrow of his bones. “It will be better for you if you can stop all this wondering and questioning. Besides,” and Loki tilts up to press the words against Thor’s ear, “it’s not as though we’ll never see each other again.”

“What?” He wants to look at Loki’s face, but Loki is applying skillful teeth and tongue to his ear, and a shudder of arousal goes through Thor. Of course this Loki of Thor’s creation should touch him exactly how he liked Loki best to touch him. 

When Loki is through, he tosses his head in such a way as used to distract Thor even on a battlefield, and says, “The realms are full of mysteries, brother. Who knows what you will find? There is much magic, and places where the veils between life and death peel back; there are slips in time, and worlds where time runs backwards; there are curious objects of such power that they render that Gauntlet merely an ugly glove. I think that we shall surely meet, don’t you? The odds seem in our favor.”

It’s such a sudden, brilliant hope that Thor feels strength flood into his body, the resolution to carry him on these spectacular quests. But just as quickly the flickering flame goes out, and his shoulders go concave. “You’re telling me what I want to hear,” he says. “None of this is real.”

“I have seldom told you what you wanted to hear,” says Loki with an even haughtier toss of his head. “What you need to hear is another story. Don’t go getting snippy just because the part of you that’s me has far more foresight.”

“Loki,” and right then Thor does not care what he is—for he can feel his brother in his arms and no one will persuade him otherwise. “I forgive you what is behind us, and I hope that you forgave me when you returned.” His arms tighten to the point where it would be painful for a mortal to be gripped thus. “I will always love you best of all.”

“And I, you.” Loki’s lips map the words into Thor’s cheek. “It is no lie meant to comfort. You felt me say it this time when you relived our reunion night.”

“I was a fool not to have heard it then,” says Thor.

“I was exceptionally distracting, if I recall.”

“Brother,” Thor says, though he is hesitant to give voice to this. “I cannot—I do not wish to live in a world without you.”

“You have done so before,” Loki points out, pragmatic. Surely Thor is imagining that Loki’s eyes have the sheen of tears. Of course he is imagining it. All of this is imagined. Loki is saying, “You will do the same again.” His mouth draws a flat line. “And you must cease this nonsense with mourning me to the detriment of all else. You’re hurting yourself to spend time with shadows. What would I say to you if I were there to witness such stupidity?”

“That no one should have the pleasure of injuring me in such a way save you,” says Thor.

“Quite so.” Loki laughs, an excellent sound when it is without subterfuge. “The pair we made.”

“Yes,” says Thor. He feels as though his heart has been plucked from his chest and Loki holds it in his hand.

“Go on, then,” says Loki. “The raccoon’s drug won’t last forever. Really, Thor, your taste in friends—”

“Go on?”

“Don’t play coy with me, we’re hardly four hundred years old anymore.” Loki undoes the black knot of his tie and yanks it free from his collar. “You know you want me one last time.”

“There has never been a time when I did not want you,” says Thor, staring at the pale skin of Loki’s throat as Loki’s fingers start to make quick work of his shirt buttons.

Loki looks pleased at that. He continues to undress in smooth, familiar movements—Thor has seen him do so countless times, but never quite like this, considering that they’re on a surreal and barren plane generated by his brain overheated with mystic chemicals.

“But you’re a figment of my imagination,” Thor ventures.

“Oh, honestly,” says Loki. “As though stranger things haven’t happened where we’re concerned.” He removes the jacket, then the shirt, sliding it slowly down his arms in the sort of tease that Thor has never been able to resist. 

Thor cannot begin now. He rests his hands at Loki’s waist, almost trembling to feel the warmth from his brother’s body beneath his palms. It seems so very real. 

Loki is a perfect manifestation of himself, with every scar that dared mar his skin in place, the same proud and graceful carriage, the cream-colored column of his neck that Thor has kissed too many times to count. He does so again, peppering kisses along Loki’s collarbone, making them far more ardent at the ear.

“Perhaps it will not be the last time,” Thor whispers there. 

“Perhaps.” Loki leans back a ways to cup Thor’s chin in his hand. “I hope that will prove true.” His eyes are wide and strangely sad; Thor would not have wished them sad. “Come, Thor. I fear our time grows short. Do as you please.”

Yet it is Loki who moves first, belying his words. He steps in to kiss Thor’s mouth, his arms twining firm and fixed around Thor’s neck, his tongue already exploring the ridges of Thor’s teeth while Thor seeks to process it. It feels so real, and Loki so exact.

Loki’s kiss is hungry, as though he is as desperate for the contact as Thor; and Thor had always loved to see his brother wild with lust, so it is not surprising that this Loki would be so. Still, it is delightful to be surprised by him. Even a construct of Loki must be unpredictable.

With a start—Thor had not taken the time to even once look down before—he becomes aware that he, too, is clad in the clothing that Loki chose for the trip to Midgard to find their father. Loki’s hand is slipping under the many-layered t-shirts, the other peeling him free from his jacket with haste, while Thor twists to accommodate him.

Loki will not relinquish his mouth, and Thor has no will to stop kissing back, ever, so they sway in place on the dark plane, their bodies locked so tightly together that there is no force now in the realms that could break them apart. 

At last Loki moves back but only half an inch, only just enough to temporarily unseal their mouths. “Had I my magic I would render us bare at once,” he says, brow furrowed in frustration. “These garments are impractical.” 

Thor strips the shirts up over his head and casts them off. The restrictive Midgardian jeans follow quickly after. “I wonder that we should be clad this way,” he says. “We wore the costumes but once.”

“The last day before everything changed irrevocably,” says Loki, and he glances away, then quickly back. His eyes rake Thor’s body appreciatively—ravenously, Thor would like to imagine, so he imagines it. Then Loki’s lips turn in a sly smile, wonderfully familiar, that Thor learned signified mischief in the cradle. “Or perhaps you were quite enamored of the suit?”

“Oh, I was,” Thor agrees. “I am, though I far prefer you free of it.” The exchange is smooth and easy between them; it is hard sometimes to remember that this is not real and that it will end. Loki’s hands go to his belt, but Thor’s get there first. “Let me,” Thor says, and Loki nods. 

Thor undoes the buckle and threads the fine-grained leather out from the loops around Loki’s waist. If this were real—if they had time—he would find many, many uses for this belt; but time and space are fleeting. So he casts it aside, once he has given Loki a knowing look to indicate its significance. Loki nods again. His eyes are as wide as they used to gaze upon Thor when they were but youths.

A flash of later memory, of memories: Loki, before him on his hands and knees, a hundred times, a hundred thousand times, writhing and weeping and begging Thor for more stripes, more strokes—for Thor to enact justice for his crimes upon his body, for Thor to scour him clean again.

“It’s a shame we haven’t the time,” says Loki mildly. “I still owe you recompense for taking the Tesseract.”

“That is behind us now.” Thor’s head comes up, no longer looking at the belt or into the past. “I’m not sorry. I would not hurt you here.”

“Whatever will you do instead?” 

Thor goes to his knees like a supplicant. He feels then that he is. He reaches with both hands, and with Loki watching intently, he tears away the delicate fabric of Loki’s trousers, rending it to pieces, leaving his brother bare at last before him.

“Dear me,” says Loki. “I have no others. You’ll leave me naked in your memory.”

“That is my hope,” says Thor, and Loki laughs. “You always loved it when I did that.”

“We all tell ourselves lies to get by,” Loki tsks, but he’s smiling. “You recall how much I struggled to explain to mother why I needed such regular increases in my monthly clothing allowance? I—ah.”

Thor has swallowed almost all of Loki’s cock in one concerted motion, a considerable task, and a skill only mastered through a hundred years of study and practical application. The heavy, fast-hardening feel of Loki on his tongue is like no other sensation; unreplicable; Thor has spent what must amount to another hundred years simply relishing the concept and sensation of Loki filling his throat. 

This is, to Thor, an intimacy greater than any other: he has not, would not, will not be on his knees for anyone else. But Loki is a rightful king as much as Thor is; and before Thor knew that, Loki was raised alongside him as his equal; he was long aware that in many areas Loki quite surpassed him. 

They did not come to this immediately—pride was Thor’s strength and greatest fault—but at that moment this is all he wishes to do, it is the only desire he has to feel this sense of giving over once more.

He leaves the last few inches of Loki’s cock untouched, for what he loves keenly comes next. If this Loki knows all that Thor has thought of him, then he will surely guess, and indeed it is mere seconds before Loki’s hands find unyielding purchase in his hair, and Loki’s hips turn, and he thrusts the final inches home, hard and swift and sure. 

Thor closes his eyes but a breath, to feel the reverberation throughout his body, to feel it go through his heart. Then he opens them, and looks up at his brother, silenced; and Loki will know also what he needs now. 

Loki meets his gaze, and without dropping it pulls back only to push insistently forward again, his steely grip keeping Thor’s head positioned just so, even when Thor would choke. Harder thrusts, repeated and repeated, indeed make Thor choke; and he chokes gratefully around Loki’s cock until his watering eyes leave his cheeks wet and a final quake of surrender forces his throat to open and to yield.

Then Loki may fuck his mouth without resistance, and this he does, driving his cock in and out past the stretched ring of Thor’s lips, a moan of approval won from Loki as Thor’s tongue works frantically to tease him. 

Loki’s pace is relentless, Thor’s preferred speed exactly, and though Loki’s hands cannot make the same fierce handles that they could when Thor’s hair was long, he still manages a hold of bruising force. There is no need to be careful here, and so Loki is not, using Thor’s mouth with vigorous enthusiasm and a covetous cock.

It is perfect. It is perfect, and not once have they looked away from one another, they are locked in. Thor would swallow Loki down inside himself if he could. 

“You know,” says Loki, his voice thick with satisfaction, “this is my favorite view in all the cosmos.”

Thor has long hoped for such a declaration. Loki could be terribly spare with praise, of the opinion that that it revealed a vulnerability that would come back to injure him; he was far swifter with barbed remarks and wry observations, and left it to Thor to be candid. But Thor supposes there is little to be lost now, little reason to conceal what moves him—and after all, this is Loki as Thor would best imagine him to be. Such a Loki would—

“For so long I envied your beauty,” Loki says, one hand slipping down to Thor’s cheek, to feel how Thor’s cheek strains over the slide of his cock. “It was only much later that I realized how foolish that was. For—ah, brother—it—it is mine, is it not? And only fools are jealous of what is already theirs to keep.”

Thor can say nothing. But he nods, bobbing his head and taking Loki’s cock yet deeper, thrilling to hear the possessive tone from Loki. For Loki to say aloud that Thor is his is an aching need buried far from view for many years, ever since Thor’s certainty that they belonged to each other was shattered by Loki’s leaving—by Loki’s many leavings.

“My lovely Thor,” says Loki, his thumb stroking the cheekbone under Thor’s eye, under the eye that was lost. “I should have told you that so many times.” 

The words feel a balm even if Thor is, ultimately, feeding them to himself, for they seem to emerge from Loki’s lips. And Loki’s expression then is affection and adoration and nothing else; his eyes conceal nothing, they are the green of a tunic made for midsummer.

“I suppose we must hurry,” Loki murmurs, “though I would like very much to watch you like this until the moss grows up around your knees,” and with a tightening of his fingers in Thor’s hair and thorough thrusts that drive their rhythm down Thor’s throat until he can swear he hears distant music, Loki spends in his mouth with an exclamation that is joyful. 

He tastes sweet. He tastes so sweet. How can he? How could he not? Thor holds every drop of him and swallows slowly, his eyes on Loki’s eyes. Loki’s cock still stretching his mouth and mind and body and soul into ecstatic supplication. Loki, Loki.

Loki slips free at last, but Thor won’t let him go far; he catches his brother by the wrist and pulls him down, so that Loki settles onto his lap. Thor presses his forehead to Loki’s breast and breathes great, gulping breaths, though he feels no sense of exertion here. It is not physical—it is his thoughts that strain him so; and for a space all he can do is clutch Loki to him and hold on.

“Thor?”

Now Thor cannot breathe; he cannot speak; he can no longer think. Distantly he is aware that he is crying. Loki’s fingers stroke through his hair.

“I love you so much,” Thor manages at last. “So much, Loki. I love you best of all.”

“Why?”

Despite himself Thor smiles into Loki’s skin. “I forget.”

“Then I will remind you,” says Loki, and he reverses their positions, lying back and tugging Thor over him. For the first time Thor realizes that the ground beneath his hands and knees is firm but slightly giving, coarse where he had thought it smooth and featureless. Examining it over Loki’s shoulder, he sees that it is a dark, rich ochre.

“Keep your eyes on me,” Loki says, and Thor’s gaze snaps back to him at once. “We are running out of time.”

“I could have lived a million years at your side and it would not have been enough time,” Thor says. 

“Conveniently for you, you won’t have to put such a ridiculous notion to the test,” Loki says with the smallest of smiles and his accustomed eye-roll. “It is a fine enough sentiment, though.” 

“It is the truth,” Thor tells him, one hand moving to touch Loki’s body in wondrous exploration—as though it were the first time all over again, and he cannot believe his luck in being granted access to something so beautiful. “It has long been my truth.”

Loki stares up at him, silent, and studying Thor’s face as though he must memorize it in order to pass a trying test or later create a portrait from his mind’s eye. His hands are not idle, the fingers of one admiring the play of muscles at Thor’s bicep, the other hand wrapping around Thor’s cock with his wonderfully expert grip. 

Thor groans at the sensation, something he’d been quite sure he’d never get to have again, as Loki strokes him with knowing sureness. Loki knows best how to touch him because Loki was the one who figured it out through much trial and error. They learned this together.

“Perhaps I should say something thoughtful about how you must find others to love now that I am gone,” says Loki. “But you do not wish to hear me say such a thing, do you, Thor? No, you liked my selfishness in this: that the very idea of it maddens me. That I am hardly inclined to be gracious here. That I want you for myself and cannot abide the thought of another in my place. You would prefer, instead, to hear me say that you were made for only me.”

Thor has had many other lovers, though he cannot recall the shape of their faces now. He knows that he will have lovers again. 

But love? That he will not be able to bequeath again, for it is lodged here forever in this one face, this one mind, this one body. This soul. “Yes,” Thor agrees. He punctuates it with a tender kiss to Loki’s mouth. “I knew it the first time I had you, and we came together as though cast from the same mold.” 

“Ha,” says Loki, his eyes kindled. “I knew it far earlier than that.” He licks his hand, his fingers, makes a show out of preparation, as Thor has ever enjoyed; and then he is working to position Thor’s cock between his legs. Loki presses him insistently inside as Thor bites his lip nearly through to feel this once more. Thor knows that his eyes are the ones widening now. He holds himself in place, in awe. He knows himself to be trembling.

“Well,” Thor allows when he finds his voice, “you were much cleverer than I.” Still he holds back. “Can I—?"

“I cannot be injured as I am,” Loki says, hooking his legs around Thor’s waist to pull him further in. Thor thinks that is something like the echo of a grin on Loki’s mouth. “It’s true that your monstrous cock has sometimes inconvenienced me when you were over-hasty, but we are quite beyond that now.”

“Monstrous!”

“Some things cannot be helped, brother.” Loki grins full-on then, but the wry expression falters when Thor drives deep inside of him. “Oh. _Brother_.” 

“Loki.” 

For a good while after that they do not speak. Thor covers Loki’s mouth with his own, covers Loki’s body with his own and tries his best to blend them together. 

It is strange: it feels akin to every other time he’s had Loki like this—and nothing near like those times, for they lie together on a directionless plane, Loki only tangible beneath him because Thor desires him so. 

He can feel every place where Loki is pressed to him, he can feel Loki’s admiring hands moving on him and in his hair, he can feel the exquisite tightness of Loki around his cock. And yet a part of Thor’s mind tells him with increasing volume that he is also very far from here, that what is here is not for him and he must be leaving soon or else not leave at all. 

He tries to clear his head, where it seems a fog is gathering. Instead Thor seeks the finest angle for his thrusts and Loki moves in concert against him, pleasure writ in his features, so well-known and so treasured and so mourned and missed. 

Loki is responding as he ever has—and also with an urgency and a sort of rapt affection that Thor supposes is a mirror of his own. Thor feels both the intensity of lust and a sense of amazement so profound that every thrust courses through him like a song, a prayer borne through the body.

Once Thor had been fixated on seeking his own release above all else—oh, he loved to watch Loki come apart for him, loved to make Loki lose his tightly-held control, loved for Loki to beg and gasp beneath him—but ultimately his own satisfaction had ever been the goal. Especially when they were young he behaved this way, and it is no surprise, he realizes, that Loki stared up at him then in conflict, adoring and resenting Thor in equal measure. 

But Thor knows the years have changed him much for the better, and that at some point pleasing Loki became as vital and paramount as anything else; and now it is the only mission that he has. What is his own fleeting release, when this could be the last time he may watch Loki’s face change with the love that Thor gives to him?

There is a knot in Thor’s throat as he thinks about it, and he slows the rapidfire motion of his hips and somehow tears his mouth away from Loki’s, though he regrets ending their kiss at once, and leans back in to peck Loki’s lips to show that he is sorry for the hasty departure. 

Loki arches one dark eyebrow, curious, and he looks so much himself then—witty and passionate and willing to give Thor more quarter than any other—that Thor feels fresh tears prick at his eyes. 

Loki cuts this off at the pass. “You mean to say that I am so good that you aim to weep anew?” He smiles a wicked curve. “Why, I thought you’d long since grown out of crying during our coupling—“

Thor pulls a face, surprised by this teasing into laughter. But he will not be diverted from his purpose in ending the kiss. He must know, and this Loki is wise; he is all that Thor has observed of his brother collected; perhaps he will know, as he has seemed to, what Thor at least consciously does not. 

“Even when I sought to become more considerate, I realize that I never asked how best you like this,” Thor says, keeping the motion of his thrusts carefully rhythmic—neither sped up nor dallying. “We took each other dependent on our moods, and let that dictate action. Tell me, if you can, how you wish for me to move now—how to please you most, if I can.” 

Loki blinks at him, but does not pause to consider before answering. “In truth, I had no preference for method,” he says, lifting one hand to lay against Thor’s cheek. “Hard or gentle, violent or tender, it was much the same to me. All I ever wished each time is that it would not end, for though it was a bitter irony, I never felt more myself—certain of who I was—than when you were within me. As though I could not quite be me without you.” 

Loki closes his mouth on the words, looks as though he would pull them back if he could, but since he cannot, he casts his eyes skyward—if there were a sky—and tries on a slippery sort of smile. “Sentiment,” he tsks. “Now I am telling you rather what you wish to hear, I think.”

Thor turns his head, presses a kiss to Loki’s wrist. His thoughts are a sudden maelstrom, a whirlwind, a rising, rushing tide that washes what he might say in response from his mouth. He can do little then but use his hand to angle Loki’s hips up, to bury himself deeper, deeper; then he reaches between them and takes Loki’s cock in hand, working him in time with Thor’s grounded, purposeful thrusts. 

“That will do well,” Loki murmurs. 

Thor still cannot speak without bringing about the end, and so instead he drives them on as long as this time and space will allow. He kisses all of Loki that he can reach while still bound to him; he drags his teeth across Loki’s skin to free the taste of him; he strokes Loki to another spending, makes Loki tighten and gasp against him; he licks Loki’s liquid heat from his fingers as his own reward. 

Still Thor goes on, and on, and on, delving into Loki and pushing against the building fog. The fog surrounds them, drifting up to mellow the rays of sun from above. He wonders if Loki can see it.

“Thor, you must,” Loki says at length, at last. Perhaps a million years have gone by. “You must.”

Only then can Thor go over, for now he knows it to be true. He kisses Loki, tangles his hands in Loki’s hair, holds his cock as far inside Loki as can be reached and breaks himself apart there. It is a great relief; it is to know ecstasy again; it is to find that he is once more certain of who he is, that he is never more himself than when he is here.

When he draws out at last, Loki can see that he sees. Thor lies alongside him, touching Loki everywhere, grafting the fine lines into his memory, so that he will not be at risk of losing them. 

“Tell me how you know,” says Loki. “I am glad that in the end you do.”

Thor says, “What you said of us. I had not thought of such a thing until you said it. I did not guess you felt as such, and I did not understand it myself until now.” He slips a hand around Loki’s neck and guides him closer. His hand shakes. He will not let go for anything, though the fog presses in thick and wet now, as if it means to drown him. “Loki, I did not know. So you should not have.”

“One last trick, brother.” Loki tilts in and kisses him: his eyes are clear and sharp and resolved. He pulls away. “Beloved. My apologies, truly. But you must not stay. I could not let you. You have stayed far too long already.”

“No—”

“Goodbye, Thor. I cannot love you best for you are the only thing that I love. I will—” and Loki is whispering words against Thor’s cheek, his ear, his neck. He is speaking rapidly, a torrent of words so quick Thor strains to hear them all. His lips are pressing Thor’s skin. His words come even faster, faster, they are a flood. He is sliding his fingers through Thor’s hair. He is—

—he is dragging Thor by the arm with astonishing strength across the roughened ground. There is a precipice that was not there before, that Thor did not sense.

Thor fights now, wildly, desperate, his hands scrabbling for purchase where there is none to find. His fingers try to hold onto Loki, who slips free like smoke.

“Brother,” Thor pleads, and Loki sends him over the edge. 

Thor falls. He falls forever. He falls through time and memory, he sees the birth of the stars and how they will die. He falls with both hands reaching upward for what he has lost. 

He falls and falls and falls—

“Loki.” The name rings loudly in his ears, startling Thor into awareness. His voice, croaking it, sounds broken in two. He opens his eyes.

He is in the small white room, its lights dimmed. A single lamp casts illumination against the gloom. At the foot of the bed, Rocket is curled into a ball, at rest; but as Thor stares at him he can see the raccoon is not sleeping. His eyes glow watchfully upon Thor.

Unthinking, Thor reaches out to feel his soft fur, trying to grasp that this is his reality once more; but at the last moment he decides he would prefer to keep his fingers and so retracts his hand.

Rocket lifts his head. He licks his paw and slicks back an errant tuft, as though unhurried, then nods at Thor. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he says. “Took you long enough.”

“Rabbit,” says Thor. He clears his throat. Rocket’s words drive the air from his lungs like a blow, and for a moment he feels that he is still falling. He grips a handful of blanket for something to hold onto. “How long was I—“

“Ten, fifteen minutes,” Rocket answers. “Impressive. Most people, they don’t make it more than one or two. Say that’s long enough, where they’ve been.”

Thor’s hands are unsteady, though he wills them to be still. “And do most report that they have visited with the dead?”

“Uh, duh,” says Rocket. “That’s kinda the point, ain’t it? Like I said, people feeling all sad and torn up about losing someone, they swallow the drug and it takes them where they need to go. They get to say their proper goodbyes, and then, whaddya know, everybody feels better.”

“I believe you left out some details,” says Thor.

Rocket shrugs. “Knew how hard-headed you could be. Figured it was better to be a little vague. Wasn’t sure you’d be in the mood to make the return trip if you knew where you might be going.” He uncurls into a sitting position, crosses his arms. “Besides, it doesn’t always work like that. Doesn’t always work at all.”

“It worked,” says Thor. 

His head is hurting badly, is spinning without end; his body is in disarray, not wanting to respond to simple commands; his heart is thudding in his chest as though it might break free.

“Well, that’s nice,” says Rocket, with as much casual disinterest as he can muster without straining anything. When Thor doesn’t respond, his tail twitches impatiently. “ _Was_ it nice?”

“Which part?” Thor hedges. He does not have the words to describe what he saw, even had he the will to do so.

“You know. The afterlife,” Rocket says. “Purely professional interest, you understand. I like to have the best information I can on this kind of thing. Maybe I’ll consider converting to …” He gestures at Thor, seems to be racking his brain for the right vocabulary. “... Viking, or whatever.” 

“Loki was not in the afterlife,” says Thor. He is staring at a distant point over the raccoon’s shoulder. He supposes it is unnerving, but Rocket doesn’t try to meet his eyes, like he knows that Thor can’t quite bear to adjust to his surroundings yet.

“Huh,” says Rocket cautiously. “But, you, ah, you saw him, right?”

“I saw him,” Thor says. “He tried to make me believe that he was not real—that I was having an experience of the mind and not the spirit.”

“Little bit of both, I’d say, technically speaking. But that’s crafty. A quick improviser, I'm impressed. Why’d he do that?”

“He shared your perspective,” says Thor. “He thought that if I understood where I was, and that it was truly him beside me, that I would not have come back.” The words burn in his throat; tears are burning his eyes. “He was not wrong. When I realized, I fought to stay, but it was too late.”

They sit in silence with this between them. After a beat Rocket nods. “That’s why they only allow one dose of this stuff,” he says. “Isn’t safe to do a trip like that more than once. Seems like there’s some rules you can’t go around breaking too often. Not that I care about rules, on general principle, but I’m pretty sure another go would permanently fry your brain.” He flashes a sharp glance Thor’s direction, as though keen to deflect him from the idea. “Seems like he didn’t want that to happen. The permanent brain-fry, I mean. Your brother.”

“No,” Thor agrees. “He did not want that.”

“Clever son of a bitch, to do what he did,” says Rocket.

Thor frowns, looks terribly affronted. “Our mother was a lady and a queen.” 

When Rocket opens his mouth in protest, Thor smooths the glare and smiles at him a little. “You see, Rabbit. It is not so hard to be tricked when you do not expect it.”

“All right, all right. I get it. Your whole family’s smarter than they looked, hey? Hidden depths?” 

“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” Thor says. “Loki was the most brilliant amongst us.”

“Think I woulda liked him,” Rocket says, as though trying to be kind, then catching himself at it. He puffs up his chest. “You know, a genius calls to genius type of thing.”

Thor‘s smile remains in place. “Yes. I think you would have. And he would have appreciated your tactics.”

Rocket seems mollified by this, relaxing again; he lies back down and Thor realizes that he intends to pass the night by Thor’s feet on watch. 

“You needn’t stay, my friend,” Thor says. “I swear to you, I will make no move to return to Loki now. You gave me a gift that surpasses any other, and I will spend my life thanking you for it.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe I’m sleepy, is all.” Rocket curls up, making himself compact. “There’s been a lot of excitement around here.” He lowers his head. “Glad I could help, kid, but I’d rather you don’t mention it. Don’t want the others to start getting ideas and asking me for favors. I don’t do favors.”

“As you say.” Thor has no intention of relating to anyone else what happened; he will only share a sliver of it with Rocket, since it was his generosity that brought the journey about. They lie still for such a stretch that Thor begins to think that his bold little companion is asleep. 

“So you gonna tell me where he was, or leave me here in suspense?”

It takes Thor a long while to speak. He doesn’t trust his voice to hold, and indeed upon some of the words it falters. But he does not hesitate. He is as certain of this truth as he is assured of his brother’s love for him. 

_I would like very much to watch you like this until the moss grows up around your knees._

“Loki is on an upper branch of Yggdrasil,” Thor says. ”It is our people’s sacred tree of life, and death: it is a bridge to all of the realms, to the lands of life and afterlife. He is waiting there for me between the worlds.”

“A tree, huh.” There’s a softness to Rocket’s voice that Thor has not heard before. “So why doesn’t he climb up or down? Seems like that’d be lonely.”

“Yes.” There are tears streaming down Thor’s cheeks; he does not heed them. It is as though he can feel Loki’s lips moving along his jaw, Loki whispering urgent words before he propelled Thor towards the branch’s edge. 

Thor is still trying to hear them all. He works through it slowly. “He is afraid that if he goes elsewhere, into the lands of the dead, that I will not be able to find him again. He thinks we most certainly would be separated there. But the line between what is living and what is not is thin on Yggdrasil, and if he stays, we may yet be reunited in some way like the one you gave me. Until my own life is over and I can join him, he will wait in the boughs.”

 _If you hurry back, I will know, and not forgive you_ , Thor can hear. _You must not, Thor. Your road is long and paved with much-needed victories, and I can but hope to meet you again as you pass by. But when at last you reach its end, you will know where to find me. I will not go on from here without you._

“Well,” says Rocket, into the quiet that follows. “Ain’t that sentimental.”

Thor is startled from his reverie. “It is,” he allows. The word makes his breath catch. “Loki always swore that he was not one for sentiment, and indeed he was often reluctant to speak plainly of what was in his heart. Thanks to you I have proof of what he feels for me.”

“Yeah, you think,” says Rocket dryly. “I’d say planning to hang out a few thousand years alone in a big tree on the bare chance of getting to see your mug a time or two means that he likes you.” It’s unnerving to see a raccoon wink. “Don’t get me wrong, you’ve got a pretty face. But not that pretty.”

“I would do the same for him,” says Thor.

“Sure you would,” Rocket says. “Sounds like you were made for each other.”

“We were,” says Thor. 

We are, Thor thinks. We will be once more. It is the deepest sense of solace that he has known in the time since Asgard fell. 

He thinks about the listless gray days that have passed since Thanos came upon them, his plodding hours of misery and nights spent in retreat. The horrid, unfathomable notion that haunted him, that he would never see Loki again. He was awakened in that hellish reality just this morning, but it seems now so far away that it happened to a different man. Everywhere Thor looks there is color bleeding back into the world.

 _You must cease this nonsense with mourning me to the detriment of all else. You’re hurting yourself to spend time with shadows,_ Loki had reprimanded him. Thor thought then that his brother spoke of the dreams, that he knew all that Thor knew. But Loki had not known: he had spoken assuredly of Thor’s temperament after fifteen hundred years of watching him react. After fifteen hundred years of loving him above all things. 

Loki guessed what his loss would do to Thor, and how Thor would grapple with it and finally find there an opponent who could best him. Loki could not have known what shape Thor’s indulgent self-destructiveness would take, only that it would manifest in such a way as to put Thor in danger.

Loki had been quite clear about this being an unacceptable way to carry on. 

_What would I say to you if I were there to witness such stupidity?_

_That no one should have the pleasure of injuring me in such a way save you._

As he watches the world regain light around him Thor is smiling. Loki gave him the way forward that he could not see: a path that will lead to meeting Loki again if they are very lucky, and a path that winds to where Loki is when Thor’s own time has come. 

With such a goal—with such a promise—before him, Thor can travel any distance and meet any obstacle unburdened. Thanos is less than nothing, a singular grain of sand, when he is held up to the history that Thor has shared with his brother and what they will yet share. 

“What’s so funny?” Rocket wants to know. Thor is still smiling.

“There is nothing humorous,” says Thor, honest. “It is that I feel as though I know how to be alive again.”

“Yeah, that’s not funny at all,” Rocket says. “But I’m happy to hear it.”

Both of them settle back, and Thor lets his head sink into the pillow. As he starts to shut his eyes, he can hear the last of the words Loki traced against his cheek like an echo only just now reaching him.

 _Do not feel regret that I am here. I quite expected to be sent somewhere far less savory. That I was given this choice is because you loved me, and I could not help but love you back and be made better for it. Waiting will not be hard. I welcome the time for reflection, for there is much I have to answer for. Perhaps when you find me again I will be nearly good. Can you imagine?_ Loki’s lips had pressed a final kiss to Thor’s skin. _Brother, while I lived I loved you more than life, and here I love you more than death. I wait gladly._

Thor closes his eyes. He sleeps without dreams.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  I'm on tumblr, possibly crying: <http://et-in-arkadia.tumblr.com>. I adore you a lot for being here.


End file.
